In many enterprises where it is important to keep track of the locations of customers, this function is performed using written or printed articles, i.e., charts, lasts, files of cards or the like. In circumstances where this function has been computerized, the computer generally does little more than mimic an earlier technique, the only significant difference being that the user views the information on a monitor and manipulates it with a keyboard. Examples of businesses which must deal with this general problem are hotels, motels, restaurants and parking facilities. In each of these cases, it is necessary for someone to keep a continuing tally of which spaces (tables, rooms or parking slots) are available and which are committed or occupied.
The prior art includes some devices which are intended to keep track of "location occupied" information automatically. An example of this are systems in a theater including switches in each seat controlling lights at the box office to inform the ticket seller which seats are occupied. In addition to being impractical for various reasons (including the fact that a "sold" theater seat is not necessarily physically occupied until the show starts), there are other considerations such as the maintenance of the system and the large numbers of wires and the like. Systems of that type also have severe limitations and simply are not usable in a hotel or restaurant situation.
It has therefore been deemed more practical to employ the simpler approach of using charts or lists, whether manual or computerized. In many restaurant circumstances, no record at all is kept because of the difficulty of continually changing a written chart. The result is that the only record is in the memory of the person controlling the seating and visual observation of the facility is used to update this information. In a large restaurant where more than one host or hostess is seating patrons from more than one entrance, availability of seats may be controlled by allocating different sections for seating by different hosts or simply using a visual assessment approach, neither of which is entirely satisfactory.